This invention relates generally to machines for loading bottles into cases.
Heretofore, as exemplified by that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,712,405, machines have been devised for automatically loading bottles into cases. These machines, however, have proven less than satisfactory in actual operation. For example, they have typically employed a conveyor for conveying bottles to a bottle retrieving station and another conveyor for conveying open cases into a case loading station. Either or both of these conveyors have moved into intermittent motion in order to group the bottles together, grip them at a bottle retrieving station, and load them into cases at a case loading station. This stop and go movement results in slow rates of case packing speeds, and also reduces the reliability and longivity of many machine parts. The gripping means employed in these machines have also failed to function properly in gripping without breaking grouped sets of bottles. Misalignment of any one bottle typically causes it to break or to produce less than a full complement of bottles within the case. The mechanisms employed by the machines in grouping the bottles have typically employed a number of independent conveyor belts moved at successively increasing speeds in order to effect accumulation. This has resulted in the requirement for yet additional conveyor belts and transmission means for driving them at mutually diverse speeds. At the case loading station the means for loading the groups of bottles into the cases have also been less than satisfactory in that their structures have often come into contact with the sides of the cases causing them to be bent or crushed during loading and bottles broken as they are passed through their open tops.
Accordingly, it is a general object of the present invention to provide an improved machine and a method for loading bottles into cases.
More specifically, it is an object of the present invention to provide a bottle loading machine having improved means for accumulating individual bottles at a bottle accumulation station into a group.
Another object of the invention is to provide a case loading machine with improved means for gripping and lifting a group of insulating bottles from a moving conveyor at a bottle retrieving station.
Another object of the invention is to provide a case loading machine capable of loading bottles into cases being moved along a conveyor at a uniform velocity.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a case loading machine into improved means for lowering a group of bottles into an open case without misalignment which may produce a crushing of the case sides or breaking of the bottles as they are inserted into the case.